Chris Minns sets up NSW Labor leadership showdown with former leader Michael Daley

The Kogarah MP will nominate for the leadership, with a rank-and-file ballot against former leader Michael Daley to follow.

Chris Minns will nominate for the NSW Labor leadership. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dylan Coker

NSW Labor MP Chris Minns will nominate himself to be the next leader of the party and has vowed to reorient its core messaging towards working families, western Sydney and regional NSW, in a contest that will likely spark a protracted rank-and-file ballot against rival contender Michael Daley and take weeks, possibly months, to reach a conclusion.

Mr Minns, the MP for Kogarah, announced his candidacy on Monday after using the weekend to take the temperature of Labor colleagues and determine whether he was likely to gather support for a viable challenge.

Mr Daley, the member for Maroubra and a former party leader, made his own announcement on Sunday while attending a protest rally against public transport cuts.

Both Mr Daley and Mr Minns claim to have a greater number of colleagues backing them.

NSW Labor Party protocols mandate that rank-and-file members must vote in cases where two or more MPs contest the party’s leadership. This process is then followed by a second vote within the Labor caucus.

The process can take several weeks to finalise and both votes are given equal weight.

Highlighting an eagerness to avoid “negative politics” and attacks on the government, Mr Minns said the party needed to evolve into one that could be considered a viable alternative to a government that had held on to power for more than a decade.

The next state election is due to be held in 2023.

“It’s time for Labor to start the long march back to regaining the trust of the people of this state,” Mr Minns said. “I didn’t get involved in politics, and I don’t believe any of my colleagues got involved in politics, just to put out press releases on a daily basis attacking the Berejiklian government. I’m confident I do have the support of my colleagues to get to the next step.”

Mr Minns, 41, was elected to parliament in 2015 having previously worked as an assistant secretary of the NSW Labor Party. He has twice nominated himself for the Labor leadership – once against Mr Daley in 2018 and then against former leader Jodi McKay in 2019. He was unsuccessful on both occasions.

His seat of Kogarah has seen a slide backward in its primary vote over the past two elections. In 2019, he secured the seat with a margin of 1.8 per cent but suffered a 5.1 per cent swing against him.

A recent redistribution of its boundaries have whittled down that margin to 0.1 per cent.

The party’s leadership was vacated on Friday after a week of infighting that ostensibly arose out of Labor’s recent loss in the NSW Upper Hunter by-election. Jodi McKay stepped aside from her role as leader and was followed by a number of her closest supporters. Ms McKay said infighting within NSW Labor and white-anting by colleagues were the reasons why she needed to step aside.

Days earlier, Mr Minns resigned as transport spokesman after a smear sheet, written by Labor colleagues, was circulated to journalists. Asked what he wanted to achieve if he won the leadership, Mr Minns said a priority would be to address the high number of toll roads and the high cost of living facing families.